


Cable-knit Solutions

by MaaaarianMadamLibraaaarian



Category: Anne of Green Gables (TV 1985) & Related Fandoms, Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Autumn, Baking, Bash still won’t stop teasing, Established Relationship, F/M, One Shot, aged-up a little maybe two or three years, all fluff all the time, and edwardian cursing in the form of the word ‘blast’, rated t for smoochin teenagers, sweater swapping, toddler Delly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26129854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaaaarianMadamLibraaaarian/pseuds/MaaaarianMadamLibraaaarian
Summary: “Slight kitchen mishap.”“So…” Bash says, drawing the word out, “That’s the solution?” gesturing to the sweater in Gilbert’s hands.Now Gilbert is really exasperated, “The simple, straightforward solution? Yes, Bash, yes it is.”
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe & Sebastian "Bash" Lacroix, Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley
Comments: 12
Kudos: 162





	Cable-knit Solutions

"Blast!"

"Anne!"

"Oh don't take that tone with me, Gilbert, you'd curse too if you splashed--BLAST! Not again!"

He ran across the kitchen to take the spoon from her as she pressed her knuckle into her mouth to suck off the boiling filling. 

"Keep stirring!" she shrieked, gesturing madly with her other hand. 

"I am, I am! Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, more frustrated than hurt," she said, shaking out her hand and dropping her voice to avoid upsetting Delphine, "Keep stirring, let me regroup."

She assesses the situation:  
Baby: fine, playing on a blanket on the floor on the other side of the table (and unbothered by the swearing).  
Finger: throbbing but unlikely to blister.  
Filling: sweet-smelling, aggressively boiling, about a minute until it can be taken off the heat.  
Gilbert: attentively stirring, the handsomest boy in the world, looking at her expectantly, until his eyes drop to her chest and sleeve and promptly widen before meeting hers again with a startled look, oh no...

She looks down. 

Blouse: blotched with two dark pink, likely delicious-tasting globs of filling

"Blast!"

Apple cranberry pie. You mess with a classic, you get burned. Or, in Anne's case, stained pink. 

And also burned, but just a little, on the finger, it wasn't a problem.

The sleeve was the problem. Anne looked down at the stained blouse in her hands, then up at her frazzled face in the mirror. The blouse would need a cold water soak, immediately, but she couldn't go back to Green Gables _now_ , in the middle of prep. She had just been thinking earlier about how being an adult meant she didn't need those full pinafore aprons anymore and heavens was she wrong. And Marilla would scold so! Marilla was right when she said the fashion for white blouses was ridiculous and modish, but Anne had insisted and Marilla had sais she was old enough to dress herself. 

A brand new blouse! Would she ever learn? Months without getting into a scrape, and now this!

"Anne?" Gilbert called through the closed door of the bedroom, "Did you get it out?"

She opened the door a tiny crack.

Gilbert could only make out one blue eye looking up at him as he raised an eyebrow.

"Anne?" he prodded again.

"This has to soak in cold water right now or the stain will never come out and I have NOTHING TO WEAR!" she despaired, but then, with renewed determination, continued onward, "Okay Gilbert, we have to finish these pies, but it's not that hard, I can talk you through it from here. Why are you--?"

He had left the one inch frame of the crack in the door and she poked her head out tentatively, seeing him shift Delly to his other hip as he exited his room again, holding something gray.

She narrowed the opening in the door back to a crack.

"Here," he said.

He was holding a sweater. She knew that sweater. It was cable-knit and gray and it looked incredible on him, especially dusted with snow, his broad shoulders shifting, the faint smell of wood and woodsmoke clinging to it.... her eyes were glazing over.

She shut the door, "No."

Gilbert sighed, exasperated, "Anne, come on," she heard his head fall against the door on the other side. 

Anne hears the clang of the kitchen door as Bash enters, then calls from the kitchen when all three of the people he left in there are nowhere to be seen.

“Da!” Delly squirms, until Gilbert puts her down and she toddler-runs to Bash, who picks her up and tosses her in the air.

“My girl!” Bash looks at Gilbert, “Why are we all in the hall?”

“Da! M’Anne in trouble! Trouble!”

Gilbert can hear Anne’s single-syllable panic-laugh at that.

“Trouble?” Bash raises his eyebrow, clearly debating between whether this is real drama or whether this is something he can make fun of. “Are you two… arguing, Blythe?”

Gilbert rolls his eyes, Bash is assured that this is not a real fight. Gilbert would never roll his eyes at Anne legitimately in distress. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not NOTHING!” Anne says, eeking into territory often referred to as ‘rather shrill,’ filling in the story from the other side of the door, even as Gilbert tries to talk lower to keep her from hearing.

“Her blouse is out of commission.”

“It’s possibly RUINED!”

“Slight kitchen mishap.”

“Significant catastrophe!”

“Very, very slight.”

“So…” Bash says, drawing the word out, “That’s the solution?” gesturing to the sweater in Gilbert’s hands.

Now Gilbert is really exasperated, “The simple, straightforward solution? Yes, Bash, yes it is, as soon as Anne admits it.”

“Fine!” A freckled hand escapes the room and snatches the sweater.

Gilbert’s triumphant smile only lasts a moment before Bash’s knowing look wipes it off his face as Bash sweeps by him into the kitchen.

“Don’t give me that look, Bash,” Gilbert follows.

“What look?”

“That look you give me when you try to convince me I’m in love with Anne.” Gilbert raises his eyebrows in overstated mockery and throws his hands in the air, “I am! You won! We’re in love! You can drop it!”

“First of all, I reserve the right to claim I called it for the rest of your life, that is not expiring. Second of all, I wouldn’t phrase it like that,” Bash says, bouncing Delly as she squirms to be let down, then watching her run off, “It’s more of an all-purpose ‘someday you’ll find out’ look for all types of situations, very versatile.”

Gilbert rolls his eyes, dropping the thread of the conversation. There is really no reasoning with Bash sometimes. 

When Anne comes back into the kitchen, Gilbert is struck by two things. The second thing is the all-too-familiar sensation of Bash, unfortunately, being right again. The first thing is the weakness in his knees at the sight of Anne’s freckles on her throat rising out of the collar of his sweater. He looks so intensely that he watches her color heighten as she blushes, and slightly wets his lips before swallowing.

“I found an apron,” he says, trying to look away, but his eyes snag on a lock of hair that has come loose, falling all the way past her collar. 

His collar. 

He’s stuck again.

Anne sees him pull his eyes away from her bare neck, then glance deliberately towards the front room where Bash and Delly had gone moments before. He approaches her in three quick strides until he’s right before her, then slides the tip of his finger from her jaw down her neck to the sensitive hollow of her throat, trailing sparks down her skin. 

Anne catches her breath.

She looks up and meets his eyes, his warm, comforting eyes now sparking with heat, and her eyelashes flutter closed.

He trails his finger back up, faster, to cup the back of her head and kiss her once, firmly, then again, lightly. Anne’s palm raises to the cut of his jaw and her eyes open again as he moves away slightly, reaching behind him to grab the apron from the chair.

His arms slip around her waist as he ties the apron strings behind her back, cinching the oversized sweater.

“Now we can’t possibly have any more mishaps,” he says, low in her ear. 

“Crises,” she corrects.

He laughs, “Kerfluffles.”

“Catastrophes.”

“We’ll be getting in no more pickles,” Gilbert says as he moves away.

Anne lets him have it, distracted by something behind her, both hands tugging at the apron strings as her eyebrows wrinkle. Bash comes in, takes one look at Anne’s face, and sits down at the table with a sly smile, almost sure that his young friend may have spoken too soon about avoiding any pickles.

“Gilbert,” Anne says severely, the scold right underneath the surface of her voice.

He turns, “What?”

“You’ve tied my apron in a solid knot.”

“It’s the only kind of knot I know how to tie. I wasn’t going to tie an un-solid knot.”

“You can’t tie a bow?”

“Not when I’m not looking.”

Anne throws up her hands in mock despair, spraying Delly with a little bit of flour and making her giggle. “Men! No reasonable skills!”

“Hey, Anne,” Bash says, “Don’t slander, I know how to tie an excellent bow.”

“Is this really the time to be worrying about the aesthetics of your apron strings?” Gilbert sighs, following Anne’s lead and crimping the hand pies closed with a series of thorough, careful presses.

“It’s not about aesthetics, it’s about ease and independence!”

“What about solidity and trustworthiness? That knot is not coming out. I’d stake my honor on it.”

“I can’t take the apron off myself now, Gilbert. A bow would have been plenty solid.”

Gilbert clears his throat, making extra sure that when he speaks his voice is not any lower than normal, “I’ll help you take it off, Anne.” He may have overcorrected. It may have come out too bright, suspiciously so.

He blushes, especially as Bash says, cloying and teasing, “Oh Anne, Gilbert will help you take it off. He’s such a gentleman.”

“He’s something all right,” she responds, flicking some flour at him for good measure. 

Later, on the walk home, they stop at their usual spot, a small glen just barely out of sight of Green Gables to say goodbye, a fading window of indulgence as October fades into the chill of November. The leaves haven't all fallen yet, still offering a little privacy just off the road. 

Anne tugs him in close, rising on her tiptoes to kiss him, smiling underneath it as he leans into her and she feels his chin work against hers. 

Anne, rationally or irrationally, thinks, not for the first time, about how everything always leads to this. Whole days with him, small touches, protracted eye contact, the fondness in his voice when he says her name, the spark she feels when she brushes past him, the way her eyes trace over the lines of him, the way he laughs when she makes a joke and she tries to make it happen again and again, all of it always ends with them here, together, connected, concluding something and starting something all at once.

She shivers slightly at a cold breeze under the sweater as it lifts, but relaxes again at the warm, heavy press of his hand against the small of her back.

The next moment, she’s glad for the stability of his hand because his mouth falls on the pulse point in her neck and she starts to doubt her ability to keep her balance on her own.

“Anne, you smell divine, always…”

“You’ll make me vain, vain-er... oh,”An involuntary sigh escapes her as he trails down her neck, and he answers with a wide splaying of his fingers against her back and a slight, low growl that sparks deep in her bones. She bends into him, tilting her head back as his warm lips trace the path his eyes had burned into her earlier. Down the column of her throat, stopping at the hollow above her collarbone to suck for the briefest moment before nuzzling his nose and mouth past the collar of the sweater.

Anne, ever the great lover of October, finds herself missing the long summer afternoons they'd taken such great advantage of, wandering to Hester Gray's garden, lazing on a blanket in the shade, napping, reading, throwing grass at each other, arguing. She knows they’re in for another long winter of stolen coatroom kisses, fiery glances, and sedate social interactions arm in arm. Even just the felt of Gilbert’s coat against her palms brings her forward in time to colder weather, and she tugs him closer by the open front.

Anne tilts her head back and almost focuses on the stars for a moment before her eyelids flutter closed again. Anne reaches up and trails her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, curling around her fingers, grown out slightly from their summer length. She traces one finger around his collar to the front of his neck, hooking him closer by a finger behind the button….the button on the collar of his shirt…his shirt…. oh NO…

“Gilbert!” she says, pressing him away with one palm on his chest.

He blinks hard and shakes his head to clear it, looking at her face.

“My blouse! It’s still at your house!” she cries, startling at least one bird in a nearby tree.

“Oh, blast!” he curses quietly, then straightens his spine, seeming to have startled himself.

Anne laughs out loud in surprise, the situation suddenly not feeling like as much of a crisis as it did the first moment of realization. “You are so susceptible to my bad influences,” she laughs, wiping a tear of mirth from the corner of her eye.

A muscle jumps in Gilbert’s jaw as he thinks, looking up at the sky as if only just noticing how dark it’s gotten. “I’ll have to run back as it is, there’s surely no time for a round trip.”

“I think Bash knows how this works, dear,” Anne says with a raised eyebrow as she rubs his cheek with her hand..

“I know, but I can’t give him _too_ much fuel.” Gilbert argues, “He’s still so smug even though it’s been _years_.”

Anne swats him playfully in the arm, “Well, it’s not _my_ fault we’ve been taking so long,” she says, coquettishly tucking a come-loose lock of hair back where it belongs in her updo.

He tightens his fingers around the thick ply of the sweater at her waist. “Have you ever taken a good look at your neck, Anne? You can’t blame me for your irresistibility,” he whispers, pressing his lips again to the sensitive spot under her ear.

“Gilber-- ah.  
We need to -- oh yes.  
Mmmmmmm -- _Gilbert._ ”  
She presses one thorough, firm kiss to his mouth, not letting up until she feels his knees give and a sigh escape against her tongue. She then grabs his head firmly in both hands and makes him look at her. “I fold, I’m irresistible.”

“You really, really are, Anne-girl,” Gilbert replies reverently. 

Anne rolls her eyes briefly, but can’t hide that the nickname softens her further somehow, which she didn’t think possible in her melted-butter state. 

She tugs him back to the path to speed their progress. “Now listen to instructions, I pretreated the stain but you’re going to have to scrub it and when you do, you have to use cold water or the stain will set. Got it?”

“Yes, Anne… you know that I know how to do laundry, right?”

“You couldn’t tie a bow! I can take nothing for granted here.”

“It’s not that I _couldn’t_ it’s that I _didn’t_.”

“Well there were certainly no lady’s blouses in that house,” Anne argues, “So I’m going to talk you through this like I’d talk it through with a pupil.”

“Yes, schoolmarm,” he singsongs. “You know, I don’t think you are thinking through how many stories you’ve told me about problem pupils, Anne. I could be very difficult. I have hours of Anthony Pye rants stored in my brain.”

They’ve reached Green Gables by this point, and Anne stands one step up, still facing Gilbert, her voice low.

“Well I certainly have never kissed Anthony Pye, so one would think you had more of an incentive to behave during this lesson,” Anne sasses.

Gilbert bows his head once in acknowledgement of the soundness of this point. 

“Now, the first thing to be clear about is that this isn’t a men’s work shirt, it’s a lady’s blouse, so first, please don’t starch it, and second, don’t be rough with it when you scrub, it’s delicate.”

Gilbert, sensing an opening, gently grabs both her hands and presses her knuckles to his lips. A thrill goes down Anne’s spine, again, as always.

Looking up through his lashes at her, he whispers, “But sweetheart, you know I’m always very, very gentle,” as earnest as earnest can be, only the smallest spark of mischief in his eye visible from the light of the windows.

Then he winks at her, tips a hat he’s not wearing, and saunters off. “You’re welcome, for the sweater by the way.” He calls softly, several steps away. “Keep it as long as you like.”

Anne watches him go, and, as he disappears from sight, pulls the collar of the sweater up around her nose and breathes in deep the woodsmokey, Gilbert-smell of it with a luxurious sigh of pleasure. “I am never giving this back,” she whispers, weaving the admission into the thick cabled wool.

If Gilbert sees her, from the trees as he looks back one last time, he never says so.

**Author's Note:**

> stole the ‘rated t for smoochin teenagers’ tag from @Lil_Redhead because it makes me giggle.  
> This fic dedicated to Green Gables Fables’ Gil, who had his favorite checkered sweater in his bag and totally would have loaned it to Anne after saving her from the river if she hadn’t yelled at him. Also because I watched all the blooper vids to procrastinate grammar-editing this  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
